Tag Archives: Stints

This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m going back to NBA Live 95 to trade players and create jersey swaps that represent their past stints.

Since another trade deadline is upon us, I feel like putting some players in different jerseys! Last month, I fired up NBA Live 95 for Super Nintendo to create some jersey swaps that represented future stints for a bunch of players. As I said in that article, I really enjoy the combination of video game nostalgia, NBA history, and a challenging exercise. Furthermore, I’ve always found the jersey swaps for traded players in NBA Live 95 for SNES to be a cool feature, one that I’ve come to appreciate even more on a technical level as a solution to the limited storage space on cartridges.

So, let’s talk about past stints for players that we can trade in NBA Live 95 SNES. As someone who really got into basketball in the mid 90s, I tend to associate the players from that era with the teams they were playing for when I first started watching the NBA and playing basketball video games. Of course, I soon found out that a number of players had begun their career elsewhere. It was sometimes difficult to imagine; a retroactive familiar faces in strange places situation! We can depict some of those past stints in NBA Live 95 using jersey swaps, so let’s take a look back…way back…

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m going back to NBA Live 95 to trade players and create jersey swaps that represent future stints.

If you played either of the 16-bit versions of NBA Live 95 back in the day, you’ll know that roster customisation is extremely limited. We can only trade players in Season mode, and even then, only the five starters for each team are available to swap. This is because the game only includes portraits for the starters, so any trade that placed a bench player in the starting lineup would result in an inconsistency in the presentation. For the same reason, we can’t change our starters prior to the pre-game introductions, though we can actually pause and substitute them just before tip-off.

On the bright side, whenever we make trades involving the starters, their jerseys will be changed to reflect their new team. Whereas the PC version used (for the time) high resolution Media Day headshots and thus had static portraits, the 16-bit versions of NBA Live 95 placed player heads on an assortment of matching shoulders. Not only did this save space on the cartridge, but it facilitates jersey swaps whenever a trade is made. To that point, I’ve made jersey swaps in NBA Live 95 for the Super Nintendo to represent several notable future stints. Let’s take a look back…way back…

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five reasons why I enjoy weird stints when they’re represented in basketball video games.

Although my favourite memories of players are from when they were on the teams they spent most of their careers with – or in some cases, where they were when I first got into basketball – I do oddly enjoy their weird stints as well. Granted, while I’ll never enjoy watching Michael Jordan in a Washington Wizards jersey quite as much as seeing him doing what he did best for the Chicago Bulls, I can appreciate those years in hindsight. As much as I wish he and other long-tenured Hall of Famers never suited up for other teams, it’s undeniably interesting to see them in different jerseys.

Naturally, that interest carries over to the virtual hardwood, where video games have preserved the weird stints of so many big names over the years. Much as I ultimately prefer to watch games and highlights where those players are in familiar uniforms, my first choice is to revisit video games – or play with classic teams – that represent those famous stints. However, just as I find it oddly fascinating to watch Wizards MJ or Patrick Ewing playing for the Seattle Supersonics alongside Gary Payton, it’s also fun to be reminded of those bizarre tenures whenever I encounter them in an old release. To that end, here are five reasons why I enjoy all of those weird stints in video games.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! From retrospectives of basketball games and their interesting features, to republished articles and looking at NBA history through the lens of the virtual hardwood, Wednesdays at the NLSC are for going back in time. This week, I’m taking a look back at some strange stints throughout NBA history, as portrayed by NBA 2K9.

Whenever I’m on a kick with an old basketball video game, I’ll end up messing around with the rosters. As you may have seen, I’m particularly fond of setting up historical scenarios. I’ll make do with throwback jerseys – as I did with NBA Live 10 during my extended kick with that game – but it’s even better when I have some Legends at my disposal. Since NBA 2K9 has both, I ended up snapping a bunch of screenshots of historical players in retro jerseys. It began with placing them in the uniforms that we picture them in the most, but I was soon re-creating some strange stints.

Obviously, I’ve discussed many examples of strange stints in my series of articles about familiar faces in strange places, specifically ones that were represented in the rosters of video games. To that end, I’ve chosen to spotlight the strange stints that weren’t reflected in a contemporary video game – with one exception – followed by a gallery of screenshots of all the examples that I was able to re-create in NBA 2K9. There’s no significance to that choice in game, except that it’s piggybacking on a recent retro gaming kick! With that being said, let’s take a look back…way back…

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is another list of five stints that never officially appeared in basketball video games.

We’ve reached Part 4 in what has become a series about players who had stints that never had any official representation on the virtual hardwood. In other words, while those stints were tangible in real life and may have been included in some unofficial, community-made roster updates, they were never captured in the default rosters of any video games, or in any official roster updates they may have received. Needless to say, this was far more common in the days before developers actually released official roster updates, even for games that came out on PC!

For Part 4, I’m changing things up a little with the theme. Specifically, not only do these players have stints that don’t appear in any games, but the players themselves are also completely absent from games set in those seasons. Therefore, if we want to update the rosters and represent those stints – wherever possible – we need to create those players. That’s what I’ve done in order to provide screenshots for all of the players, with the exception of…well, I’ll get to that! There’s no mystery as to why these players are missing – none of them were signed when the rosters were being finalised – but nevertheless, it’s a shame that these stints never appeared in any games.

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five players and their short-lived stints that nevertheless became iconic.

Even when a player has had stints with multiple teams, there’s usually one that stands out as their most famous or memorable. Interestingly, it isn’t always the team that they spent the bulk of their career with. Sometimes, it’s the short-lived stints that produce the most success or notoriety, so they’re the ones that are best remembered and often talked about. Personal nostalgia also comes into play here. I’d suggest that we tend to associate players with the teams they played for when we first started watching and taking a keen interest in basketball, or at least very early on in our fandom.

To that point, our perception of time also changes as we age. A player having a three or four-year stint seemed like a long tenure back when I was a teenage hoop head, but now that I’m older, it’s over in a blink! Looking back, I’ve realised that there are quite a few Hall of Fame players whose most iconic stints were actually rather short-lived. Despite that brevity however, those are the jerseys that we tend to picture them in. As such, it’s interesting to reflect on how long those stints actually lasted, and why they became so iconic to the point of eclipsing longer tenures. With that in mind, here are five all-time greats, and their iconic short-lived stints that I tend to remember best.

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is another list of five stints that never officially appeared in basketball video games.

It’s Part 3 in what is becoming an ongoing series recalling stints that never officially appeared in video games! I’m always wary of spending too long on certain topics, but since I ended up going to Part 21 in my series about players who only appeared on certain teams in games, a third article definitely isn’t that crazy. Besides, as long as there are interesting examples to talk about and stories to revisit, I’d rather not leave them on the table. Considering that all five players this time around were All-Stars, they’re undoubtedly too important not to discuss!

When it comes to stints that don’t officially appear in any video games, it’s usually because it was a very brief tenure, and generally the result of a midseason signing or trade. Alternatively, the move may have happened quite early in the year or even in the offseason, but missed the roster cut-off date for the game, and no official roster update ever accounted for it (in many cases because the game predates such updates becoming commonplace). This list contains examples of both, as well as a rather unique example that’s…well, there’s no question that it belongs on a list of stints with no official representation, but at the same time, it sort of was included. Let’s begin!

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Welcome to another edition of The Friday Five! Every Friday I cover a topic related to basketball gaming, either as a list of five items, or a Top 5 countdown. The topics for these lists and countdowns include everything from fun facts and recollections to commentary and critique. This week’s Five is a list of five brief stints that somehow managed to be captured in basketball video games.

At this point, I’m sure that I sound like I’m on a constant loop whenever I refer to basketball video games as interactive almanacs. I can’t help it; it’s a fitting term that describes what it’s like to browse the rosters in an old release! Of course, games will vary as far as being an accurate resource. If nothing else, they can capture some very brief stints – and in some cases, phantom stints that didn’t result in any official on-court appearances – which may not be apparent if you don’t know your NBA history. To that point though, they’re still fascinating glimpses of the league at that time!

In older games, between revised releases, ports to different platforms, and publishers releasing games at various points during the season rather than everyone aiming for a pre-season launch, titles set in the same year – and even different versions of the same title – could easily feature inconsistent rosters. To me, that’s only made those games an even more entertaining window into the past, especially when they preserve some brief stints! Those can certainly occur in games that were released close to opening night, but games that were released later stood a better chance of capturing an even rarer stint that resulted from a midseason move. Here are five noteworthy examples.

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at some stints that lasted longer than I remembered, and the games that corrected me.

I’ll never claim to be an infallible source of knowledge, whether I’m talking about real basketball or basketball video games. There’s a lot of stuff I remember off the top of my head, but I’ve certainly found that it pays to double-check and look things up. When it comes to the players I grew up watching, I tend to have a good memory as far as who they played for, how long they played for them, and when they moved on to a new team. However, my recall definitely isn’t perfect. As such, when I revisit an old game, I’m sometimes surprised to see a player still on a particular team’s roster.

Yes, this is another example of basketball video games being interactive almanacs. As I’ve said, it’s one of the most appealing parts of dusting off old video games: seeing that snapshot of the NBA at the time they were developed. Just as there’s something really fun about seeing familiar faces in strange places, or back in familiar places for that matter, it’s interesting to be reminded of stints that lasted longer than I recalled. As usual, I’m looking at these examples through the lens of the games that reminded me of these tenures. With that being said, let’s take a look back…way back…

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This is Wayback Wednesday, your midweek blast from the past! In this feature, we dig into the archives, look back at the history of basketball gaming, and indulge in some nostalgia. Check in every Wednesday for retrospectives and other features on older versions of NBA Live, NBA 2K, and old school basketball video games in general. You’ll also find old NLSC editorials re-published with added commentary, and other flashback content. This week, I’m taking a look back at the players whose stints with their current team runs through the past two generations of consoles.

It seems almost inevitable that the stars of the NBA will play for more than one team these days. While player movement is nothing new, and some of the biggest names in NBA history had stints with more than one team, we’re seeing more and more future Hall of Famers jump ship in their prime. With the retirement of Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, and the late Kobe Bryant, we may have seen the last players to spend their entire career with one franchise, or at least retire where they had their most success. It’s certainly becoming more of a rarity, as the culture of the league continues to shift.

At the same time, there are a few players who are in the midst of lengthy tenures with their current teams. With the launch of a new generation of consoles, there’s a group of players who are still with the same teams they played for at the beginning of the previous generation. How many do they number, and how does that compare to older eras and console generations? Let’s take a look back…way back…

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